


I Helped Build That One

by IneffableAlien



Series: Proverbs 20:12 [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bible Quotes, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Colorblind Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Created the Stars (Good Omens), Crowley's Eyes (Good Omens), Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pining Crowley (Good Omens), Pre-Scene: Body Swap (Good Omens), Sad Ending, Senses, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Stars, Synesthesia, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 22:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableAlien/pseuds/IneffableAlien
Summary: When Crowley and Aziraphale swapped bodies, Aziraphale struggled to adjust to perceiving snake senses—but that doesn't mean the switch was easy on Crowley, either.





	I Helped Build That One

**Author's Note:**

> Again, forgive me if the science is horribly wrong!
> 
> A couple people asked me to write a followup to "Snake Eyes" about Crowley's experience (which is a major compliment, by the way!), and I listened. You don't have to read that one first, but this story might make more sense if you do.
> 
> I didn't mean to make it sad. This soft baby just puts the "emo" in "demon" for me.
> 
> _Edited to add (1/12/20): [I read this on YouTube](https://youtu.be/iIu8U2pZf8U), for no particular reason but pressed on by a fandom friend who likes it when people do readings :)_

People say snakes see better at night.

It’s true, from a survival perspective. They have infamously bad eyesight, and the darkness enables their thermal imaging, which results in a second “sight” that no human can imagine. Night goggles and infrared cameras offer a weak approximation, only translated into senses we already hold.

But their _eyesight_ is not enhanced. In a way it’s worse, because heat _bleeds._ It casts an aura. If the reader has poor vision, they might better picture this while removing their glasses and remembering the way things blur, except imagine it much more severe. People, trees, even buildings, anything that holds heat, fade and blend together like the light of dusk.

Snakes lack red color cones in their eyes, resulting in the colorblindness called protanopia. When Crowley had looked through the pages of his astronomy book, he saw the nebulae of Alpha Centauri as a muddled sort of pear green and periwinkle blue, none of the burning scarlets and oranges.

Of course, Crowley probably didn’t long to see the color of flames. And he still saw the ineffable beauty in the cascading velvet cobweb shapes in space.

But in those miserable hours before the End of the World, Crowley had failed to realize, that a picture does not especially give off heat.

If Crowley had gone to Alpha Centauri alone, it might have devastated him to learn that all he perceived was one great shapeless fog of star-white _hot._

Aziraphale had started to adjust to borrowing Crowley’s sense of infrared, and now that Aziraphale had calmed down considerably, Crowley was exploring his own flat with his new range of colors, and the ability to see the edges of all things. Of course, no human sense is without its limitations, and lacking temperature to guide him he had bumped into just about every piece of furniture and sculpture in the apartment at least once, but depth perception was beginning to be a thing that he could understand.

“You know,” Aziraphale said shyly, “I have read up on snake vision. I suspected. And that did inform some of my … fashion choices.” He blushed. “I suppose I rather liked the idea that my … companion, for so many millennia, was seeing me as I saw.” He paused. “I had it quite wrong, though, didn’t I?”

Crowley smiled. “Ah, I did notice the color scheme, actually, and I appreciated the sentiment,” he said softly. He looked down at himself, Aziraphale’s body, Aziraphale’s clothes, and ran his hands over the front of the waistcoat. “It’s just strange not to see your, you know, light.”

“Light, yes,” Aziraphale mused. “I’m sorry, Crowley. For everything I ever said, about you not being able to sense love. I suspect you must do, although in a very different fashion.”

Before Crowley could even think to respond, Aziraphale was in Crowley’s plant room. _“Oh!_ Look at these marvelous beauties!” he was shouting back to Crowley. “How remarkable!”

Crowley laughed. “Great,” he said, “they’ll think I’ve gone soft.” The verdant leaves rustled at the angel they believed to be Crowley, practically beaming. Well, Crowley didn’t need infrared to see that. Crowley gently took a leaf in hand. “Green,” he murmured to himself. He could always see green, but this was new, this … un-obfuscated green? Was that a word?

Aziraphale walked into Crowley’s office and stepped through the French doors to the balcony. “Fascinating,” he spoke only to himself, gazing down on Mayfair.

Crowley smiled at Aziraphale through the open doors, not wanting to disturb the picture in front of him. Sure, he was looking at his own body, but all he could see was his angel. He finally stepped through, never wanting to tear these eyes away from the eager excitement on Aziraphale’s face. Crowley wondered, did his face ever look so delighted, or so bright, when he was wearing it? He desperately wanted to take Aziraphale’s hand again, but without the reasoning of the switch and its immediate aftereffects he couldn’t find the nerve.

Aziraphale glanced up at the night sky. “Huh, that’s odd,” he said. “Complete and total cloud cover. When did that happen? It was a clear night when we got here.”

“What?” Crowley said, and he looked up.

Crowley felt like he had been punched in the chest.

When Crowley was cursed, he was still in Eden. He had always taken for granted, just assumed, that certain wonders in Eden—of Heaven—had been permanently taken away from the world at large.

Crowley understood the full magnitude of his curse, then.

_You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust …_

_Grovel._ One of its usages, he knew, meant to face downward. A groveling animal can never see what’s above it.

And so it was, that after 6,000 years, Crowley saw stars in the sky, and he wept.

**Author's Note:**

> xx [siliconealien](http://siliconealien.tumblr.com)


End file.
